Blog

Overview

Electric vehicles hold significant potential for increasing energy security, reducing carbon emissions, and improving local air quality. Transportation accounts for about one-fifth of global energy use, and passenger vehicles account for about ten percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. With the rapid rise in personal vehicle ownership around the globe, demand for fuel will continue to increase along with carbon emissions unless there is a shift in transportation.

There are a variety of clean vehicle technologies and fuels in development and in use, but electric vehicles represent one of the most promising technologies for reducing oil use and cutting emissions. This market is still developing, however, and there are many challenges, particularly with technology integration, optimization, and scale-up.

The Electric Vehicles Initiative (EVI) provides a forum for global cooperation on the development and deployment of electric vehicles (EVs).

Goal

The initiative seeks to facilitate the global deployment of 20 million EVs, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles, by 2020.

EVI will enable progress toward this goal by:

Encouraging the development of national deployment goals, as well as best practices and policies to achieve those goals;

Leading a network of cities to share experiences and lessons learned from early EV deployment in urban areas and regions;

Sharing information on public investment in research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) programs to ensure that the most crucial global gaps in vehicle technology development are being addressed; and

Engaging private-sector stakeholders to better align expectations, discuss the respective roles of industry and government, and focus on the benefits of continued investment in EV technology innovation and EV procurement for fleets.